---
name: "mailsync"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "mailsync"
version: "5.2.7-3.1+b1"
release: "Debian 12 (Bookworm)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/mailsync"
---

# mailsync(1)

Synchronize IMAP mailboxes

## NAME

mailsync - Synchronize IMAP mailboxes

## SYNOPSIS

**mailsync** \[*options*\] *channel*\
 **mailsync** \[*options*\] *store*\
 **mailsync** \[*options*\] *channel store*\

## DESCRIPTION

**mailsync** is a command line tool to keep collections of mailboxes synchronized. Mailboxes can reside on the local filesystem or on an IMAP server.

**mailsync** can be invoked in three ways:

- **mailsync channel**

  Synchronizes two sets of mailboxes. In c-client taxonomy, a library on which mailsync relies to implement mailbox access, mailboxes are referred to as "stores".

- **mailsync store**

  Lists the contents of a store. It's recommended to execture this command before synchronizing two stores to check whether mailsync is seeing what you are expecting it to see.

- **mailsync channel store**

  Lists what has changed in a store since the last sync.

## OPTIONS

- **-f file**

  Use alternative config file.

- **-n**

  Don't delete messages when synchronizing.

- **-D**

  Delete any empty mailboxes after synchronizing..

- **-m**

  Show from, subject, etc. of messages that are killed or moved when synchronzing.

- **-M**

  Also show message-ids (turns on **-m**).

- **-s**

  Says what would be done without doing it (turns on **-n**). Attention: this **will** change the "Seen" flag of emails and will create new, empty mailboxes in order to be able to compare them.

- **-v**

  Show IMAP chatter.

- **-vb**

  Show warning about braindammaged message ids

- **-vw**

  Show warnings

- **-vp**

  Show RFC 822 mail parsing errors

- **-h**

  Show help.

- **-d**

  Show debug info. **-di** Debug/log IMAP protocol telemetry. **-dc** Debug config.

- **-t mid\_type**

  Use mailsync with specified message-id algorithm. Currently you have the choice between **md5** and **msgid** (default). **msgid** uses the Message-ID in the mail header to identify a message. **md5** calculates a MD5 hash from the "From", "To", "Subject", "Date" and "Message-ID" headers and uses that as message identifier.

  If you use mailclients and servers that allow empty Message-IDs (f.ex. in mail drafts) then you should use the md5 algorithm.

## SEE ALSO

There is more documentation in */usr/share/doc/mailsync* , and in */usr/share/doc/libc-clientxxxxxx/internal.txt*

## AUTHOR

Originally written by Jaldhar H. Vyas \<jaldhar@debian.org\> for the Debian GNU/Linux system. Updates by T. Pospisek \<tpo\_deb@sourcepole.ch\>.